Sorry, Knot Sorry (An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery)
Cozy Mystery
13th in Series
Setting – New Jersey and New York City
Independently Published (June 4, 2024)
Print length ‏ : ‎ 300 pages

Synopsis

Magazine crafts editor Anastasia Pollack may finally be able to pay off the remaining debt she found herself saddled with when her duplicitous first husband dropped dead in a Las Vegas casino. But as Anastasia has discovered, nothing in her life is ever straightforward. Strings are always attached. Thanks to the success of an unauthorized true crime podcast, a television production company wants to option her life—warts and all—as a reluctant amateur sleuth.

Is such exposure worth a clean financial slate? Anastasia isn’t sure, but at the same time, rumors are flying about layoffs at the office. Whether she wants national exposure or not, Anastasia may be forced to sign on the dotted line to keep from standing in the unemployment line. But the dead bodies keep coming, and they’re not in the script.

Craft tips included.

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Guest Post

Cozy Fur and Feather Babies

By Lois Winston

Have you heard the one about the communist dog, the Russian princess cat, and the Shakespeare-quoting parrot who walk into a suburban New Jersey home? There’s no punchline, but there is a humorous cozy mystery series featuring the three of them.

I write the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries about a magazine editor and reluctant amateur sleuth who shares her home with assorted relatives and the aforementioned animals. However, these are more than just pets.

The dog is a French bulldog belonging to Lucille, Anastasia’s communist mother-in-law. She named him Manifesto, after the communist treatise. Anastasia and her sons refer to him as either Mephisto or Devil Dog, the names being more suited to the dog’s disposition, which mirrors that of his cantankerous owner.

Or at least he did. I’m a firm believer in all characters having story arcs within long-running series, and Manifesto is no exception. In Revenge of the Crafty Corpse, the third book in the series, he aids Anastasia in catching a killer. By Guilty as Framed, the eleventh book in the series, Manifesto has found a new best friend and a new name, much to the chagrin of Anastasia’s mother-in-law.

Catherine the Great, a corpulent white Persian, belongs to Flora Periwinkle Sudberry Ramirez Scoffield Goldberg O’Keefe Tuttnauer, Anastasia’s much-married mother. She and her cat crash at Anastasia’s home between husbands. Flora claims descent from Russian nobility, hence the cat’s name. She and her pet also share a huge sense of entitlement. Both human and feline believe the world revolves around them and their needs. As you can imagine, sparks constantly fly, not only between the commie and the self-proclaimed Romanoff princess but also between their four-legged counterparts.

Rounding out the menagerie is Ralph, the previously mentioned Shakespeare-quoting parrot. Anastasia inherited him from her great-aunt, a Shakespearian scholar. Ralph is no ordinary parrot. Having spent most of his long life in lecture halls, he’s quite the Shakespearean scholar himself. Although African Greys are known to have exceptional intelligence and huge vocabularies, Ralph completely out-parrots the other members of his species with his ability to quote situation-appropriate asides from the Bard of Avon’s many plays.

Is this possible? Even though I’ve read up on the species, I’m no parrot expert. It doesn’t matter, though. I write fiction – humorous fiction – no matter the body count. If readers can suspend their disbelief enough to accept a protagonist who stumbles across more dead bodies than the average homicide detective in an entire law enforcement career, why not a Shakespeare-quoting parrot?

Like the dog formerly known as Manifesto, Ralph has proven his worth. With his magnificent wingspan and swooping prowess, he’s become a staunch defender of the two-legged residents of Casa Pollack. Best of all, he’s potty-trained, requiring no walks in rain, sleet, or snow at the break of dawn, or in the dead of night.

Ralph has also developed quite the bromance with photojournalist Zachary Barnes. He entered Anastasia’s life when she rented him the apartment above her garage in Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in the series. Over the course of thirteen novels and three novellas, Anastasia and Zack’s relationship has segued from one of business to romance to marriage.

However, there are still some things Anastasia doesn’t know about Zack. Even though she suspects photojournalism is a cover for his real job with one of the government alphabet agencies, he claims she has an overactive imagination.

Ralph might know the truth, but so far, he’s not squawking.

About the Author

USA Today and Amazon bestselling author Lois Winston began her award-winning writing career with Talk Gertie to Me, a humorous fish-out-of-water novel about a small-town girl going off to the big city and the mother who had other ideas. That was followed by the romantic suspense Love, Lies, and a Double Shot of Deception.

Then Lois’s writing segued unexpectedly into the world of humorous amateur sleuth mysteries, thanks to a conversation her agent had with an editor looking for craft-themed mysteries. In her day job, Lois was an award-winning craft and needlework designer, and although she’d never written a mystery—or had even thought about writing a mystery—her agent decided she was the perfect person to pen a series for this editor. Thus, was born the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, which Kirkus Reviews dubbed “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” The series now includes twelve novels and three novellas. Lois also writes the Empty Nest Mysteries, currently at two novels and one book so far in her Mom Squad Capers series.

To date, Lois has published twenty-two novels, five novellas, several short stories, one children’s chapter book, and one nonfiction book on writing, inspired by her twelve years working as an associate at a literary agency.

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